Swallowdale

by Arthur Ransome

  “It can’t really be a canoe,” said John, interrupting his reading. “It’s a rowing boat. Canoes haven’t got transoms. They’re pointed at each end.”

  “Their natives may have their own kind of canoes,” said Titty. “Not all natives have the same.”

  John went on reading.

  “EMBARK WITHOUT FEAR AND DROP DOWN THE RIVER TO THE LAGOON. YOU KNOW IT. THE ONE WHERE ROGER THOUGHT THERE WERE OCTOPUSES.”

  “I knew they were flowers afterwards,” said Roger. “Waterlilies.”

  “Don’t interrupt the captain,” said Titty. “Do go on.”

  John read on.

  “CROSS THE LAGOON. RUN THE WAR CANOE INTO THE RUSHES ON THE RIGHT BANK OF THE RIVER. LAND ONE SCOUT IN THE WOOD. LET HIM CREEP THROUGH THE WOOD, GIVE THE OWL CALL AND WAIT. TRAVEL LIGHT BUT WITH TWO DAYS’ FOOD AND BAGS FOR SLEEPING AT NIGHT. KANCHENJUNGA BECKONS. WE’VE GOT A ROPE. WE’RE HIDING THE WAR CANOE FOR YOU TO-NIGHT. BY THE OAK. YOU CAN’T MISS IT. DON’T BE SEEN BY THE NATIVES. PRETTY GOOD THE PARROT. HE ALWAYS CHEWS UP ARROWS IF THEY HAVE HIS FEATHERS IN THEM. DO NOT FAIL US.

  CAPTAIN NANCY BLACKETT

  MATE PEGGY BLACKETT

  PRISONERS OF WAR. BUT NOT FOR LONG.

  SWALLOWS AND AMAZONS FOR EVER!”

  “Is that the end?” said Roger.

  “That’s all,” said John.

  The explorers looked at each other.

  “Do you think it’s all right?” said Susan at last.

  “Well, what could be wrong?” said John. “It’s all on dry land. There won’t be any night sailing. It doesn’t make any difference where we sleep so long as the able-seaman and the boy get to bed in proper time.” He knew at once what were the sort of questions that were bothering Susan.

  The able-seaman and the boy listened breathlessly.

  “Then there’s the milk,” said Susan. “It’s no good carrying two days’ milk with us, especially if it’s as hot as it’s been to-day.”

  “There must be lots of farms in the valley of the Amazons,” said John, “and Nancy and Peggy are sure to know them. We can get milk anywhere, only we may have to take our own can.”

  “But what about leaving the camp for a whole night.”

  “We won’t,” said Titty. “Peter Duck’ll look after it. We’ll stow everything in Peter Duck’s cave. It’ll be safe enough there.”

  “What about the parrot?”

  “He’ll keep Peter Duck company. I’ll leave him a tremendous lot of food and water and put him in the cave, too. He won’t mind having a little extra sleep, just for once. Or he’ll keep watch and watch about with Peter Duck. I expect he’s lived in lots of caves before, real pirate ones.”

  “And you know we’ve never tried sleeping in the bags without any tents. What if it pours?”

  “So long as it doesn’t rain, it’ll be all right. If it looks like rain, we won’t go.” John dived into his tent and came out again at once. “The barometer’s as steady as it can be. And there’s another thing. Captain Flint would never have finished the mast up and left a message for me to hurry with the polishing and oiling if Swallow wasn’t nearly ready. Painted, I should think. And in weather as hot as this she’ll dry fast. We may have her any day. And we can’t climb mountains and sail at the same time. If we’re going to climb Kanchenjunga at all it would be a good thing to do it while we’re up here.”

  “Mother did say she didn’t see why we shouldn’t climb it if we wanted to,” said Susan, and the others knew that she was coming round.

  Just before settling down for the night they went to the Watch Tower Rock, climbed its steepest side, just for practice, and stood on the top of it, all four of them, looking over the moorland towards the distant hills. The sun was dropping behind them. Already the peak of Kanchenjunga began to look as if it had been cut out of dark purple cardboard. To the right and to the left of it were other hills, and somewhere over the edge of the moor the explorers knew they would find the valley of the Amazon River. Farther round to the right they could see the edges of the forest, and far beyond them glimpses of the lake and the hills behind Rio.

  “When the Amazons came over the moor, we saw them first over there, beyond that rock,” said Titty, pointing to a jagged rock about half a mile away in the heather.

  “But not so near,” said Roger.

  “That’s the way we’ll go,” said John. “It’s just about in a line between here and the northern side of Kanchenjunga.” He laid the compass on the rock and waited till the needle steadied. “North-north-west’s about it. We’ll go to the rock and then strike north.”

  High overhead there was a creaking noise, like someone very quickly swinging a big door that needs oil in its hinges. They looked up.

  “Swans,” said John at once.

  There were five of them, great white birds with their long necks outstretched before them, flying fast with steady, powerful wing-flaps towards the setting sun.

  “Where are they going?” said Roger.

  “There’s another lake somewhere over there,” said John.

  Over there to the west there were far dim hills beyond the rim of heather that shut them in like the horizon at sea. Beyond the heather was the unknown.

  “Perhaps the swans can see the water,” said Titty, “flying as high as that.”

  “I expect they can,” said John.

  The swans seemed to fall into the distance, and when they could be seen no more, the explorers climbed down from the Watch Tower Rock and walked gravely back to the camp in Swallowdale, thinking of what was before them.

  They sat talking round the fire much later than usual. As Susan said, it was always the way on the night before an early start. There was so much to think of that it would have been useless to try to sleep. The stars were clear in the sky before they went to bed.

  Long after the lantern in each tent had been blown out, John sat up, took his knapsack and crawled out again into the open. He pulled his sleeping-bag after him. Rummaging under the clothes in his knapsack he found the thin waterproof covering of the sleeping-bag which, in the tent, he did not use. He put the sleeping-bag into it, so that he would not need a ground-sheet. He got back into his sleeping-bag, wriggled about in it till he had found a comfortable place for his bones, and settled down once more. His knapsack, which was still pretty well stuffed, made his pillow.

  “What are you doing?” This was Susan’s voice in the dark.

  “Trying what it’s going to be like without tents.”

  “Let’s all try,” said Roger.

  “Why aren’t you asleep?” said Susan.

  “Can you see the stars?” asked Titty.

  “Yes,” said John.

  “I wonder if the prisoners of war can see them from their cells.”

  “They aren’t in cells at all,” said John.

  “If they can’t get out when they want, I expect it feels as if they were.”

  “Good night,” said John.

  “Good night, good night, good night,” came from the three tents in which there were still explorers. The fourth tent was empty, and John, lying comfortably stretched in his sleeping-bag, with his head on his knapsack, was looking up at the stars and feeling less like sleep than ever. At least he thought he did not feel like sleep.

  After a bit he wondered whether counting stars would work as well as counting sheep going through a gap in a hedge. That was what mother used to tell him to do when he was a little boy. He snuggled down in the sleeping-bag, so that only his nose was over the edge of it and began to count the stars in the Milky Way. But he had not time, really, to count the bigger stars in more than a few inches of it. It may have been the counting that closed his eyes for him, or it may have been the hard day’s work on the new mast with the sandpaper and the linseed oil.

  CHAPTER XXII

  BEFORE THE MARCH

  THE camp was astir early in the morning. Susan began at once making ready for the march. Titty had waked with a plan in her head which she had told to Roge
r, and the two of them had taken their knapsacks and rushed off to the woods, promising to come back at once. John passed them there, filling their knapsacks with small pine-cones, when, after sleeping very well in the open, he was hurrying down to Swainson’s farm with the milk-can. They were back in Swallowdale long before he was, for he had to go first to Horseshoe Cove to give a last dressing of oil to the mast, and then round by the farm to get the milk for breakfast and to tell Mary Swainson that they would not be wanting any more milk until the evening of the next day because they were going to be away for the night.

  “I’m just rowing over to the village,” said Mary, using the native name for Rio. “Is there anything you’re wanting there?”

  “I suppose you won’t be going to Holly Howe?” said John. “I’d like to tell mother not to come here to-day or to-morrow because of our being away.”

  “Why, of course I can and welcome,” said Mary Swainson. “You bide a minute while I get you a bit of paper and you can tell her what you like.”

  But old Mr Swainson shouted from the kitchen and called to John to come in.

  “Maree,” he shouted, “what are you letting him stand out there for? Come in, young man, and sit you down at the table. That’s the place if you want to do a bit of writing.”

  John went in and said “Good morning” to the two old people. Mary got a pencil and a sheet of paper out of a drawer and set him to the kitchen table. Then she clattered off for the milk, while old Mrs Swainson went on with her patchwork quilt, and the old man watched John at his writing and half hummed, half sang bits of a song about a young man saying “Fare thee well” to someone he was leaving behind.

  John wrote:

  “Don’t come to Swallowdale to-day or to-morrow because we are going to the Amazon River for the climbing of Kanchenjunga. We are taking our sleeping-bags. The crew will go to sleep at the proper bed-time. We are coming back to-morrow. Everything is quite all right. The mast is finished. Swallow will soon be back, so it’s a good thing we are going to climb Kanchenjunga now. With love from all of us. John.”

  He folded it up and wrote, “Mrs Walker, Holly Howe,” on the outside.

  Old Mr Swainson watched him all the time he was writing.

  “Eh, but you can make that pencil move,” said the old man. “In my young days they didn’t teach us to write as fast as all that. But you’re not such a one for singing as that young brother of yours. He’s a lad for a song, so he is. But perhaps he isn’t as quick with a pencil. And there’s me. Can’t write at all. Never wrote a letter these fifty years. But sing. Now, if it comes to singing …”

  John did not know what to do. There were the others waiting for the breakfast milk, and there was the camp to be struck and the whole expedition to get on its way, and if songs began who could tell how long it would be before he could stir. But luckily Mary Swainson came bustling in at that moment, and took his note and gave him the milk and got him outside, and all in such a rush that it was almost as if she had swept him out of the farmhouse door. He never knew quite how it was done, but he thanked her very much and hurried away through the forest by the short cut up to Swallowdale. As he went he could hear for some time the voice of the old man singing in the house.

  *

  When he climbed up beside the waterfall and looked up Swallowdale he could hardly believe it was the place he had left so short a time before. The four little cream-coloured tents were gone. The others had taken down his tent as well as their own, and the valley did not look like a camp any more. Tents make all the difference to a place. Now, once more, it was a wild, rocky valley as it had been when first they came there. It did not look like anybody’s home, and John knew that when they had gone back to Wild Cat Island, Swallowdale would look as if they had never been there. The first real flood would wash the dam at the bathing-pool away for ever. Everything would be as it had been, and their own Swallowdale, with its neat tents and cheerful fire, would be no more than a memory or something he had read about in a book. It was a queer thought, not comfortable. Still, at the moment the cheerful fire was still burning and all the signs showed that breakfast was waiting only for the milk.

  “Here’s the milk,” said John, “and I’ve sent a despatch to Holly Howe to tell mother where we’re going.”

  “Well, that’s a good thing,” said Susan.

  “Did you tell her not to tell any of the other natives?” asked Titty.

  “I forgot about that.”

  “She probably won’t, anyway,” said Titty. “At least, not unless she’d made certain it was all right.”

  “Did Mr Swainson sing?” asked Roger.

  “Yes. He wanted you to be there to sing with him.”

  “I will, when we come back,” said the boy.

  “Porridge to-day,” said the mate. “We’ve got a long way to go. I’ve made enough for second helps all round. It’s no good trying to make the milk last out. We’ll finish it.”

  “Everything stowed?” said John.

  “In Peter Duck’s,” said Titty.

  “Breakfast first,” said the mate. “Have a look at the cave afterwards. There was plenty of room for everything. It’s better than when the Amazons came.”

  “It looks almost like a shop,” said Titty.

  “Only everything in it is ours,” said Roger.

  They made a tremendous breakfast, the sort of breakfast explorers ought to make before marching into unknown country. There was much more porridge than ever Susan had made them before, and then bacon, fried till it crackled, and lots of it, and after that the usual bunloaf and marmalade and big mugs of tea. And while they were getting through the bunloaf and marmalade Susan had eight eggs in the saucepan being turned into hard-boiled ones, to take on their journey.

  “I shan’t want any more till the day after to-morrow,” said Roger, when breakfast was done and Susan was giving them all two eggs apiece to put in the outer pockets of their knapsacks.

  “Well, put these eggs in, anyhow,” said Susan.

  “I shan’t want them,” said Roger.

  “Perhaps you’d better leave your chocolate behind too,” said Susan, and Roger thought better of it, and packed his eggs away like everybody else.

  Then the last of the things that were to be left behind were stowed away in Peter Duck’s cave. Really very little was being taken, just a sleeping-bag and a waterproof covering for it in each knapsack, one mug for the party, one cake of soap for the party, a toothbrush apiece and the food, which had been parcelled out, some taking one thing and some another. There were four bunloaves, two tins of pemmican, the hard-boiled eggs, a good lot of chocolate and some apples. The mate scrubbed the kettle with a bundle of heather till there was no more black on it that would come off. She put the lid in the outer pocket of her knapsack and strapped the kettle on the outside with the flap that came down over the neck of the knapsack when its string had been pulled tight. John was to carry the empty milk-can in the same way, and under the mate’s orders was rinsing it out in the beck. The other two were let off easily, and this was just as well, because they wanted to cram their knapsacks full of pine-cones. “For patterans,” Titty explained.

  “But a patteran is to show other people how to follow us.”

  “These are for finding the way back,” said Titty. “You see, on the moor there are no trees to blaze, and we couldn’t leave bits of paper. But there are no pine-cones on the moor, so if we mark our trail with them we shan’t miss it when we are finding our way home from Kanchenjunga.”

  Susan and John knew very well when it was no use arguing with Titty, so, once their sleeping-bags were inside, they were allowed to fill their knapsacks to the brim with the pine-cones they had brought up from the forest.

  They crowded into Peter Duck’s for a last look round by the light of one of the candle-lanterns that the mate had lit and put in its old place on the shelf with the other three beside it. She had made a first-rate job of the stowage. At one side of the cave there was a deep bed of fi
rewood, already cut and broken to a useful length. On the firewood in four rolls side by side were the four sleeping-tents, each with its own bundle of tent-poles and little sack of tent-pegs. There they were well out of harm’s way. The old ground-sheets from last year’s camp had been spread on the floor opposite the woodpile, and on them were the stores tent, rolled up, the tin boxes with the main stores in them, and the spare clothes, and three other tin boxes, one of fishing tackle, one with Titty’s writing things in it, and one with books, the ship’s papers of the Swallow, and the barometer.

  “I say, Mister Mate,” said Captain John, noticing this box, “I don’t much like leaving those behind.”

  “It’s no good taking them,” said the mate. “It isn’t as if we were sailing. And you’ve got the compass to take, anyhow, and the telescope. And, anyway, it’s only for one night.”

  “Peter Duck’ll look after them,” said Titty. “He knows how important they are. He’ll take watch and watch with the ship’s parrot.”

  “You’d better bring the parrot in now,” said Susan.

  Everything that could be done to make the parrot comfortable had been done. He had been given a lovely piece of bacon rind to tear at, and three days’ allowance of seed and a lot of fresh water. Also Titty had explained to him carefully how much they were trusting to him, and that he was to be on guard too, so that Peter Duck could take a rest now and then. There was a good deal she would have liked to say to Peter Duck himself, if only he had not happened to be out at the time. So she made things very clear to the parrot. The parrot had been noisier than usual in the camp, saying, “Twice, twice, two, two, pretty Polly, pieces of eight,” besides several times giving the wild shriek that showed he knew everybody else was agog about something. But as soon as he was put in the cave, though his cage was in a very good place, on the top of the pile of tin boxes, he stopped saying anything at all and it was only too clear that he did not think he was being fairly treated.